Timing's everything for Canadian skip Bernard
Last Updated: Thursday, January 28, 2010 | 2:42 PM ET
By Jesse Campigotto, CBC Sports
Cheryl Bernard was the class of the Canadian curling trials, but the skip will still have her work cut out for her at the Winter Olympics. (Nathan Denette/Canadian Press) When curling fans look back on this season, one of the enduring images will be of Cheryl Bernard, fresh off her surprising victory in the final of the Canadian curling trials in Edmonton, weeping with joy during the national anthem as she came to grips with the reality that she would be representing her country for the first time at the 2010 Winter Games.
It was the type of raw and honest display of emotion that can make Olympic sports so compelling, even if Bernard felt a little sheepish about it.
"I don't know if I like crying on national TV," she told CBCSports.ca with a laugh in an interview about a month after her big win.
What was going through her head at the time?
"I was thinking about my Dad because he was a really big influence on my curling and he passed away six years ago. I was thinking that he would be just having the best time. And I was thinking about my family — they'd been there all week supporting me."
Teammate Susan O'Connor, right, gave Bernard a shoulder to cry on after their trials victory. (Nathan Denette/Canadian Press) Impromptu displays of emotion notwithstanding, Bernard would love to find herself in the same spot on Feb. 26, when the gold medal is awarded at the Vancouver Olympic Centre. But in order to do that, she'll have to navigate her way through a very balanced, very deep pool of competitors from which picking a winner might reduce even the most plugged-in prognosticators to (sorry) tears.
Success may hinge as much on chance — who gets hot at the right moment — as on skill.
"The women's field is much more wide open than the men's," said CBC curling analyst Mike Harris, a silver medallist at the 1998 Olympics. "Anybody can win. You can play really well and still not win. That's how evenly matched the women's field is."
There's even debate over whether Bernard should be considered a leading contender. She'll be up against the likes of Sweden's Anette Norberg (the defending Olympic gold medallist and a two-time world champion), Switzerland's Mirjam Ott (the silver medallist at the last two Olympics and a two-time European champ) and China's Bingyu Wang (the reigning world title holder).
"I'm not even sure [Bernard's team] is a top-three favourite," Harris said. "I expect them to get to the medal round. Then it's a question of winning the right game."
This, Harris is quick to point out, is not an indictment of Bernard's ability. Sure, she's never won a world or national championship — her best showing at the Tournament of Hearts is a finals loss to Marilyn Bodogh in 1996. But the 43-year-old Calgarian rose magnificently to the occasion at the Canadian trials, topping the round robin with a surprising 6-1 record before knocking off 2006 Olympic bronze medallist Shannon Kleibrink in the final by executing a clutch draw with the game's final stone.
"Being under the radar wasn't such a bad thing at an event like that," Bernard said.
Even if two-time reigning Canadian champion Jennifer Jones had won the trials as expected, Harris said he'd still consider her the "third or fourth" best skip at the Games because the rest of the field is so experienced and so good (some foreign bookmakers appear to disagree, installing Bernard as a slight favourite over Wang).
China's Bingyu Wang is the reigning women's world champion. (Frank Gunn/Canadian Press) This creates a problem for Bernard. The Olympics tend to attract a lot of casual sports fans, or people who aren't sports fans at all. Not realizing that Canada does not dominate women's curling, these viewers could tune in with a gold-or-nothing expectation that puts unreasonable pressure on Bernard and her teammates.
The skip said she and Susan O'Connor, Carolyn Darbyshire, Cori Bartel and alternate Kristie Moore are aware of this, but unbothered.
"We have expectations to win a medal as well. But it's sport, and anything can happen out there.
"I think as long as people see the effort and the commitment that you have to the sport and what you're trying to do, whatever happens, everyone's going to be supportive of it," Bernard said.
As for the added hoopla of playing on home soil, where Canadian Olympic officials have been loudly trumpeting their goal of topping the medal standings, Bernard said the positives outweighing the negatives. Rather than focus on the added pressure, she sees a shorter flight ("I'm not a big traveller"), familiar surroundings ("We don't have to adjust to the food") and plenty of friendly faces in the stands.
"It's how you choose to look at it, and we look at it as a great thing," she said.
"At the trials, it was a much smaller scale, but we had our families there and the support from them — there were 40 or 50 of them cheering us on the whole week — we just loved it.
"That's how we're looking at the Olympics. We've just got a way bigger family this time."
